Dear Visionaries:
I agree with everything Melynda says; the way we treat our military dead and wounded and their families is disgraceful. The paltry amounts paid to war widows, widowers, and their children speaks louder than Mr. Bush's flight suit Macarena on the deck of the USS Lincoln. Ignore the rhetoric; that $6000 death benefit tells us all we need to know about where our real priorities lie.
As for that fat bastard, Rush Limbaugh, I think it's worth noting that what he's setting up here is a false dichotomy. As Ron points out, the 9/11 families received a negotiated settlement to keep them from suing the airlines. It was an industry bail-out, no different in intent and purpose than the bail-outs of the savings & loan industry in the early '90s or the Chrysler Corp. in the early '80s. What was paid to the 9/11 families has nothing whatsoever to do with our parsimonious treatment of our servicemen and women. Mr. Bush could change the latter with the stroke of a pen. He could ask Congress for more money for hazardous duty pay, for widows' and widowers' pensions, for disability benefits, funeral costs, and a host of other service-related compensations. If Mr. Limbaugh really gave a rat's ass about our men and women in uniform, he'd be asking why Mr. Bush hasn't asked for more money for these things. Instead, he's decided to tar the families of 9/11 as greedy money-grubbers. I invite you to ask yourself why he's doing this -- could it be because many of the victims' families have been publicly critical of the Bush Administration and its response to both the creation of the 9/11 commission and the implementation of that commission's recommendations?
When we pit the loss of military families against the loss of the families of the 9/11 attacks, we play a wicked and deceitful game, and we do it purely for partisan political gain. We're playing three-card Monty with genuine human tragedy. Rush and his handlers (the GOP hacks who brought us war in Iraq on false pretenses) draw our attention to a load of hooey about the supposed greed of 9/11 families (those Democratic New York elitists) in order to take our eyes off of the fact that our government is treating our soldiers like shit. As any Vietnam or Korean War vet can tell you, this is an old, old story. We love our soldiers when they're headed off to war; we wave our flags and tell ourselves how handsome they look in their uniforms. But when they come home tattered or damaged or dead in a coffin, where are we then? Where are our flags and our patriotism and our ever-lasting love and gratitude and support? How do we care for the disabled? How do we care for the families of the dead? Rush needs to stop looking at the 9/11 families with his jaundiced eye and instead start looking in the mirror. We all do.
Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment
----- Original Message -----
From: Melynda Huskey
Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2005 11:44 AM
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: RE: [Vision2020] (Fwd) [Fwd: why do we let this greed continue?]
I'm definitely in the "loathe" category when it comes to Mr. Limbaugh--but
the point he makes is an important one--at least till he gets to the tired
old rhetoric about "entitlement politics." Leaving that inflammatory and
unnecessary remark aside, the question of how we compensate the men and
women in the armed forces is particularly important.
When we consider that soldiers are overwhelmingly recruited from the lowest
income brackets in our nation, and that they are disproportionately people
of color (among enlisted ranks), our treatment of military personnel becomes
even more disgraceful. These are vulnerable people whose lack of other
opportunities for education and employment funnel them into the military,
where we exploit them without shame.
We sent these young people to fight and die in Iraq (and, it appears, will
soon send them to Iran) on fabricated evidence, with inadequate equipment,
and with a delusional plan for victory. When they die there, we turn our
backs on their families.
As a Quaker, of course I oppose all military action; as a citizen of the
United States I oppose the exploitation of soldiers to further a cynical and
elitist political agenda. Is this what we have come to as a
nation--torturers, liars, exploiters of our own population to enrich and
secure the positions of a few powerful men?
Some analysts recently have drawn parallels between the U.S. and Nazi
Gernamy in 1935 or '36. As a student of the classics, I see a closer
parallel in Imperial Rome--we have become a bloated imperial power, sending
occupying forces wherever we deem the financial interests of the small group
of men who own our nation require them. Like Rome, we are overextended,
overconfident, and hugely vulnerable to the guerilla forces which resist us.
Our flight-suit clad Nero, drunk on power and privilege, imagines himself
invulnerable. Unlike Caesar, who retained a slave at his side to whisper to
him, "You too are mortal," Bush has driven from him every dissenting voice:
as Colin Powell fades away, he is replaced with Condoleeza Rice, who
testified this morning that it is her duty as Secretary of State to maintain
complete solidarity with the President in all things, so that no hint of
differing opinions will ever emerge.
We are running headlong toward an age much darker than that which followed
the collapse of Rome. As we turn our backs on our own nation--leaving basic
human needs such as food, education, health care unmet in the midst of
outrageous plenty--we generate the armies of revolution, who have nothing to
lose, indeed, but their chains. We can't build the prisons fast enough to
contain the disenfranchised, bitter, and reckless multitudes we're creating.
The gap between the richest and the poorest is growing by leaps and
bounds.
We are the richest nation in the world, and the most powerful. We could
lead the world in literacy, in care for infants and children, in providing
health care, in justice and economic opportunity, in education for all. Why
don't we?
Melynda Huskey
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